


Do You Feel Held?

by gubby



Series: Unholy Union [2]
Category: Red Dead Redemption (Video Games)
Genre: AU, Arranged Marriage AU, Backstory, Demon AU, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Trauma, Virginity, Wedding Night
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-24
Updated: 2020-05-24
Packaged: 2021-03-03 04:55:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,567
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24345367
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gubby/pseuds/gubby
Summary: Part two to The Altar Is CallingYou and Arthur celebrate your wedding night
Relationships: Arthur Morgan/Reader
Series: Unholy Union [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1757644
Comments: 2
Kudos: 64





	Do You Feel Held?

“So, tell me about this would-be fiancé of yers, sugar,” Arthur said, his tone between playful and growling. You walked side by side in the autumnal forest on the way back to your house, hand in hand, and he swung your connected arms back and forth in amusement. He was clearly slowing himself down so you could keep pace with his longer strides. He had offered to summon forth some nightmarish steed for you both to ride, but you declined. 

Strange as you were, you were uninterested in theatrics of that caliber. 

“He’s. Uh, male. And has a face and some hair.” Arthur scoffed out a quick laugh. 

“Ain’t nothin special, I’m guessin’? Or are you just tryna spare an old devil’s feelings?” _Better yet, are you tryin’ to protect this sonuvabitch from me?_ “That’s awful sweet of you, buttercup, but I promise you I’ve heard worse.” Your face is unreadable, which is equal parts intriguing, irritating, and nerve wracking for Arthur. Really, you’re just paying attention to the leaves that crunch beneath your heels. You make it a game to try and step on the ones that look the crunchiest. You’re very good at it. Having to think of conversation to make, or recalling any of the identifying characteristics of your fiancé, is making you worse. Arthur, who is easily at least seven feet of demon beef, leans down to be at your eye level. 

“Or maybe… you love him?” Arthur asks, eagerly awaiting the answer which could destroy him. Crush his blackened heart, shatter his damned soul like a crystal chandelier suspended by a rope in the crossfire of a heated sword fight. You stop walking and twitch your nose bizarrely. 

“Chu!” You sneeze, rubbing your nose with a sleeve, still sniffling. Arthur pauses awkwardly, unable to say ‘bless you’.

“No, nothing like that. He’s nice enough I guess, but not at all interesting, you understand. I’m sure marriage to him would have been almost infuriatingly tolerable.” Arthur has only known you for a few hours, but he can already see why someone completely ordinary would bore you to tears. This relaxes him somewhat, because he isn’t boring... Is he?

A question begins to bud on the tip of your tongue when your house comes into view at last. Arthur slides his hand beneath your chin and tips your head up, his eyes roaming over your features in adoration as his sighs. This kiss he plants on your lips is soft, gentle, and almost overwhelmingly warm. Like the tender underbelly of some great beast, the kiss implies near fatal vulnerability just beneath the surface. So of course you kiss back. He parts from you with a smile behind his eyes, and calls to you in a low whisper. You’ve never heard your name spoken so kindly. 

“Prepare yourself, sweet thing. I’ll be back come midnight to collect you for our wedding night.”

—————

Rehearsal was boring, but you were distracted, much to the displeasure of your parents and the staff. What did Arthur mean? Did he just want to hit it and quit it, or was this like, _it?_ Were you going to pack your bags and move to hell? Not the most unappealing idea, given the current circumstances, you just would like to be more well informed. 

Your rehearsal is concluded with a lot of aggravated sighing from everyone but your fiancé, who has his patient gaze affixed to you still. Despite everything, he kisses your hand innocently and bids you goodnight. You almost felt bad about being unfaithful to him, but was there really any faithfulness to begin with, when you didn’t feel much of anything for him? His parents would just find another girl anyways, one probably much more sensible and agreeable and normal. 

After dinner and a hot bath, you retire to your room and change into your nightgown, which you’ve never really considered sexy, but you were on rather short notice and you weren’t sure what exactly to be preparing for. You aren’t really sure why you’re even thinking of this, as if what happened today wasn’t just a delusion of your hopeful romantic mind. Wouldn’t it be nice, though?

Being all warm from the bath, and your stomach full from dinner, you can feel yourself getting sleepy, and the clock is still a ways from midnight. Maybe if you sleep, you’ll dream of Arthur. Then again, when you wake up, maybe you won’t remember any of it. 

————

A clawed finger traces over your cheek lightly, trailing down to toy with the modest collar of your nightgown and the little ribbon bow that adorns it. You really are such a darling thing. Innocent, sweet. Everything Arthur couldn’t be. Everything he’d been told he could never have. 

Your eyes begin to open, and your gaze followed up the demon’s arm and shoulder, until your eyes meet his. His eyes are predatory and dark, but only as a thin veneer over his fears of absolute rejection. You were bound to him now, yes, but you weren’t mind controlled. He wouldn’t do a thing like that, no matter how lonely he got. 

“When did you get here? In my room, that is.” You grasped his hand gently and brought it back up to your cheek. It was _super_ toasty and nice. Arthur reveled in the contact and the pleased look on your face. 

“This ain’t yer room, sweetness. We’re in my domain. Jus’ made it look like yer room so you’d feel comfortable,” he uttered, almost like he didn’t want you to hear it, in case you’d be mad. Upon closer inspection, the rosary that was kept hung next to your door was absent. It made sense that he wouldn’t recreate that detail. 

“Is this my home now, too?” You asked. 

“Only if you want it to be. I could return you to the world above if you wanted, too,” he sighed. “But you’d never be free of me. Not forever.” You rub your thumb thoughtfully, patiently along the underside of Arthur’s wrist as you childishly cling to his arm. He can’t tell if your comfort is out of affection, pity, or something else. But he knows what he wants for it to be. 

The demon sits down on the bed, seemingly bigger than your bed at home, and you sit up to be level with him. Your nightgown is caught beneath you, pulling some of the fabric taut and flush against the swell of your breasts. Unintentional or not, it doesn’t go unnoticed.

You look up and see a sudden intensity in Arthur’s eyes, accompanied by an otherwordly glow. You felt compelled to ask your unsaid question from earlier. 

“Why was your altar in the woods, waiting for someone like me?” He closes his eyes and breathes deeply, as if attempting to summon emotional strength. He wants this to work. He wants you to know all of him, and for him to know all of you. And this is as good a start as any. 

_A long time ago, I was in love with a human woman, and she was in love with me, or so I like to believe. Despite how different we were, and the worlds we came from, we were in love. So we chose our favorite spot in the woods for a little ceremony, a ritual that would tie us together forever. I said my vows, but when it came to be her turn she wouldn’t look me in the eyes. I should have seen it coming from miles away, but I ignored the signs. I just wanted to be happy with someone._

_She knew that I would not and could not join her in the mortal realm and give her the life she wanted. She said that it didn’t bother her, that she still loved me, but I don’t think it ever stopped weighing on her mind. She left me at that altar. Donned a silver rosary so that any contact I tried to make would burn me. I still have the scars from trying. In the end, she decided we were too different after all_.

Arthur waited for something. Pity, disgust, admonishment, anything. But all he felt was the gentle and smooth flesh of your hand, almost cool against his warm skin, cupping his cheek and going up to tangle in his hair and stroke one of your thumbs over his blackened horns. How you knew that would comfort him was a mystery. 

————-

Your scent engulfs him as he buries his face into your hair, you smell wet and wild and woodsy, like spices and potpourri alongside the scent of a rotted log turned over, one with an entire ecosystem of newts and worms and beetles subsisting on fresh, rich soil. You smell of the death that sustains life, and it endears you to the demon all the more. In you he finds the sense of love impending— of a love that hasn’t yet bloomed, but even so he can imagine it clearly. It’s intoxicating and tear-jerking. 

He looks at you with softness undefined when he asks:

“This—what’s between us. Do you feel it too?” His skin burns pleasantly beneath your palms. “I feel it— I feel it so goddamn much I could die!” He doesn’t have to explain what he means. It’s an all encompassing and infinite fire between you two. One that burns with potential and promise, like your life to this point has been waiting, and your real life has just begun. Though it may be dangerous, you can’t refuse it. 

“I feel it, Arthur. I do.” The way you utter his name like you’re coming off of a high note, like it’s been practiced in your head, shoots straight to his loins. There’s a growing urgency in your voice, and he feels his body screaming for him to respond to your needs, regardless of whether or not you know of them. The adoration in his eyes betrays the depravity he feels. 

His hands are large, warm, and calloused. They cup your cheeks as Arthur leans his entire body into you and kisses you like he’s trying to devour you. His hands trail down to the swell of your throat, the curve of your waist, the meat of your thighs, where he grips and pulls you into his lap unapologetically. Your quiet and restrained mewls are going to be the death of him. He grits out your name. 

“Baby. _Angel_. Tell me you want this. Tell me that and I’ll be yours.”

“Arthur, I want this. I want _you_ .” The moment you finish he pushes his mouth against yours so hard you can almost hear your teeth click together. His mouth is raw on yours, with animalistic amounts of teeth and tongue, with _passion_. You feel a few hot, wayward tears against your cheeks, and you know you’re not the one crying.

The demon parts, looking at you for approval as he places his hands at the hem of your nightgown, pulling it up over your head when you nod. Your underthings are not removed with the same grace, as they’re sliced apart by the delicate work of his claws. There’s a ravenous fury in him, but he pauses to appreciate every curve and mark and pocket of fat on your innocent body, nervousness radiates off of you in waves while you tremble under the heavy weight of his gaze, clearly trying to stay brave and keep your eyes on him.

“You ever been intimate with a man before, darlin’?”

“No. I’ve only ever been kissed--”

“By _who_?” He blurts out, unable to contain his budding jealousy.

“Just friends. Playmates when I was young, but I fear I know just about as much now as I did then,” you trail off, averting your eyes as you submit to embarrassment. Arthur’s fingers delicately cup your chin and guide your gaze back to him.

“A _virgin bride_ , then, how cute,” he croons, a gleam of something sadistic in his eye, but gone in an instant. “I’ll take care o’ you, promise. You’ll never know pain from me unless you wish for it.” He presses his forehead to yours, gently.

“My wife. My beautiful, sweet, strange little wife…”

The word strange had never sounded so lovely to you. It had, for as long as you could remember, made you unmarriageable and discomforting to others of your class. It was something that people called you behind your back with quieted giggles.

But coming from Arthur, it made you feel special. Like it was something wonderful no one else could have.

Your awareness returns when one of his hands finds the curve of your breast, toying with one of your nipples while he gently bites and sucks the other. His hand travels further, reaching your ass and grabbing, pulling you even closer-- right up against the bulge under the simple cloth he wears. You get your first taste of delicious friction as he begins rutting against you fervently. He thumbs your clit while he latches onto your throat, smiling at every choked moan and breath you release at the new sensation.

You soon find yourself laid gently on your back, the curtains of the canopy on “your” bed closing, much of the light going with it, but Arthur's eyes and patches of his warmest skin, like his palms and across his nose, have a faint light about them, as well as beneath the cracks of his horns.

\---------------------

Arthur grips your thighs and guides you to wrap your legs around him as he leans forward and over you. There’s an intensity behind his eyes that’s frightening, and yet you can’t look away. His hand comes back to your cheek, and everything stops.

“What do you want?” you’re not sure what he means. The way he says it makes it seem so much deeper than just permission for sex. Tears form at his eyes once more, and they drip onto your cheeks.

“I’ll be anything for you. Just say what you want, and that’s what I’ll be.” 

An idea strikes you. A thought that made your eyes widen enough for Arthur to pause and worry. Your palm comes up to his cheek and you can feel his hot tears run down your arm. The mortification— the scathing and paralyzing _fear_ of rejection has the demon choking down a sob. That rejection seems imminent and inevitable, with the pitiful display he thinks he’s cultivated. Who would want _this_? A broken down hell creature, battered and torn away from all that is strong and all that is beautiful. You would never—

“You don’t have to be ready for this. I will still have you. I will still want to be here. Relationships aren’t based in the realization of fantasy—,” you move your hands down his body to his waist, where you gently guide him from atop you to lay on his side, face to face with you. 

“This is not a play, you have no part to fulfill. You don’t have to be anyone or anything but _you_.”

He hates for you to see him this way, but he would feel even more pitiable and ashamed turning away from you. You scooch closer, wrapping your arms around him and pressing light kisses to his face. 

Sobs turn to full on wails, and yet you don’t let him out of your loving hold. 


End file.
